If you are satisfied with 1M, here are some good bets:
- Take up a high-paying corporate job. I would join a pre-IPO company such as LinkedIn where you'll get a competitive salary, stock options that will likely be in the money and probably a good deal with the employee stock purchase plan.
- Join one promising startup per year as an early employee. Vest enough stock to be over the cliff, exercise your options and leave. This is essentially similar to what an angel investor does, except that you cannot do it in parallel.
- Start a "traditional" business. In the US making $1M in 5-10 years of running many kinds of businesses is pretty straightforward if you're willing to make the effort and can stick to it. I actually did this: my former consulting business made seven figures over four years.
If you want to create a new product or service, 1M is a completely arbitrary number. You should aim to build a business first, and once that's done think about ways to keep growing it until you're satisfied.
